


Names and Memories

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [50]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 21:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7238965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later. Much, much later. After a lifetime and more. A return to the Fade, a spirit that used to call itself Cole, and a spirit who used to call himself Justice. For the prompt "an abandoned or empty place."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Names and Memories

Later. Much, much later.

There’s a spirit called the Champion that he runs across sometimes. It’s not Hawke. It was never any part of Hawke. It cobbled its persona together from the images of the Champion it found in people’s dreams, mortals who’d never known Hawke save for what they’d heard secondhand, what they’d read in stories; the lies Varric once told, long ago.

He still feels time passing, even here. He’d thought that would stop when he returned to the Fade.

“Why do you watch if it hurts?” Compassion says. They watch the Champion lead an army in rebellion, and that’s wrong. That was never Hawke’s role. It should be Fiona. Adrian. Levyn. Countless others whose names have been forgotten where the Champion’s remains. But he enjoys this version of events in its own way.

And Compassion’s frustration with him is palpable. Holding on stubbornly to old memories, a name that should have been laid to rest a long time ago, an identity that’s long since outlived its purpose. Losing himself in it, maybe. He knows what it looks like. But pain isn’t always a wrong that needs to be righted, and he thinks he can do more, be more like this, as Anders.

“Jagged edges where he used to be, empty and abandoned, trying to fill in the gaps but you’re not him anymore. Tangled up for so long. You’ll feel better once you just wash him away, be Justice again. I tried to be a person once too.”

“And you did not want it, in the end?”

“No, I didn’t have to try. I was already a person.”

Compassion speaks of the name it used to have like an interesting fact it once read in a book or saw in someone else’s dream, and it would be easier by far to forget, to be able to treat his own name with that kind of distance. And the spirit who still prefers to call himself Anders sighs though he has no need to breathe, and shrugs and feels Anders’ feathers rustle around him, and certainly he would still be a person without these things. He holds onto them all the same.


End file.
